OK, so I finally got to ride my new Lib Tech Skate Banana for a little bit, mostly on the green slopes trying to work on buttering. One thing I noticed was that I was mostly on this one beginner slope and there were so many Skate Banana’s its sick. I can’t imagine the parks when they’re running at full. I felt like such a poser.

Magnetraction:
My friend tried this board too and says it seems to “vibrate” in the turns. I do feel the same way about this as it seems that you can feel the serrated edge cutting into the snow. Although it still holds an edge really well. It doesn’t make it slip out. I’m thinking that this might reduce your speed because of the individual serrations catching the snow. Last year I got to use it on rained out icy slopes and it holds an edge on ice too, both in skidding and it can carve the ice to a certain extent too. I have never been on a board better than this for icy conditions…and I keep my edges sharp.

Banana:
This board turns on a dime. Seriously. It turns so fast that it threw me the first time I was trying to do snapping “cross-under” carves with this and would have knocked the wind out of me if I didn’t have armor on. It’s almost like cheating your turns because it takes less effort to initiate as the board pretty much turns for you…so fast.

It’s also very forgiving when spinning on ground or landing a spin. I’ve done the fastest and smoothest ballerina moves I’ve ever done in my life and got real dizzy. I feel it has a tendency to overspin over catching an edge in this regard so you won’t lose control as easily. It’s obviously easier to press and I was sort of getting the spinning board press thing going much easier than with my old cambered board.

On the down side, it does seem to have less “pop” as I’ve read. And ollieing on it doesn’t seem to give much height. Although perhaps I need to work on it with the new board to alleviate this situation, if possible. But this would make sense too. Can’t have everything.

General:
I did a couple of runs as fast as I could on the beginner slope…which wasn’t that fast. And I noticed that the board chatters a bit. Although I have a really soft short one (flex 4). The larger ones are flex 6 so it might be a little different. I can’t tell if this is partly due to the banana (making it “skip” bumps more) or is simply the soft flex.

i have found that btx (or full rocker) rewards a different type of ollie. I call it a wakeboard ollie, were the height come from rolling the board back on the rocker and getting the front leg high, popping at the last minuet. Not the same pop as a cambered board but it seems to get you as high. Where the btx ollie shines in soft snow. A little tail weight sinks the tail as the board rolls back into its own track, making it easy to boost ollies in the pow. where a cambered board cant fully flex in soft conditions as the snow gives too much. Also weighting the tail of a cambered board in pow, slows the rider down quickly, not so much with rocker.

this is all more evident on full rocker boards, like the 1"+ rocker beast that was the first year of the new gyrator